Obama, despite being of below average intelligence and a complete product of affirmative action, managed to get himself elected President based upon a cult of personality and legions or derranged and creepy supporters. If he doesn't believe his own cult of personality, he has more self control than any man in history.

"Obama- “Contrary to the rumors you’ve heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton, sent here by my father Jor-El, to save the planet Earth.”

So what? I mean his supporters are so derranged and over the top, how can he not? He clearly believes it. How could he not? How could someoen go from failed community organizer and junior Senator to President and not believe in the cult that put them there?

Does the question permit the answer that both are exploiting hype? If not, then Sarah Believes the hype she presents and Barack believes some nuanced hype that only he can ever decode including, but not limited to, everyone's fantasy about a Mr Good Promises that they always dreamed about.

despite being of below average intelligence and a complete product of affirmative action, managed to get himself elected President based upon a cult of personality and legions or derranged and creepy supporters.

Obama has so mercylessly screwed and made fools of his supporters, maybe he doesn't believe the hype. It is not so much that Obama thinks he is that intelligent as it is that he knows that is supporters are not intelligent.

Joke on. How is that closing GUITMO going? How is pulling out of Iraq? How is fighting the real war in Aghanistan going? How is bringing all the torturers under Bush to justice? How is that stimulus going? You know the one that was going to keep unemployment below 8%? How about the Patriot Act that was creating the Stazi in America? That has been repelled right? Those were all fierce moral imperatives right? The biggest issues in American history.

Do you understand what an idiot Obama has made of you? Obama may be stupid, but he clearly understands how stupid and what cheap dates his supporters are.

He's not used to losing or being challenged, and when challenged he didn't take it too well and appeared to be on the point of breaking. Palin's problems more are due to other things, such as not self-editing what she's going to say.

Regarding BHO's failings, right after one of the debates, I asked people at Freerepublic to create a video from the debate footage that just contained the part where BHO got flustered. A couple hundred people saw that, but no one did anything.

Meanwhile, a similar video showing McCain losing his cool got hundreds of Diggs and hundreds of thousands of views.

The point of that is to suggest that people concentrate on, you know, doing things that are effective and are a bit less academic than who's cooler.

For instance, the energy put into discussing what Palin had for breakfast could have been much better spent encouraging people to ask this question. If someone had really pressed her on that it would send at least minor shockwaves through DC, encouraging them to stop lying and misleading the public. Let me suggest concentrating on things like that, and asking folks like Instapundit and HotAir why they aren't promoting things that could be highly effective.

"This is why the pirate version is so much more fun. Answering the hypo: Obama believes it, Palin uses it."

That is pretty close to the truth. You have to remember Obama has spent his entire life around white liberals like FLS. Those people have no balls and are incapable of independent thought. So they sat around him and went "oh wow it is a black man, isn't he profound". Hard to imagine that didn't go to Obama's head. How could it not have?

He's not used to losing or being challenged, and when challenged he didn't take it too well and appeared to be on the point of breaking.

Is this Barack Obama you're speaking of? Obama lost to Bobby Rush, the ex-Black Panther, and went on to run again. Has Palin learned from her mistakes? That, like confronting one's press staff instead of trying to circumvent them, is a sign of maturity. Has Palin failed only to rise another day? She couldn't handle being governor while the mean kids were picking on her.

I see very little difference between how Palin reacts to a challenge and how Carrie Prejean reacted to Larry King's questioning.

"Is this Barack Obama you're speaking of? Obama lost to Bobby Rush, the ex-Black Panther, and went on to run again."

That is right. He lost that brutal dog catcher election in Chicago. My God, the man is a giant. Think about how his accompishments make people like Eisenhower look so feeble. What is taking on the SS in Normandy when compared to losing and recovering from losing an election for dog catcher in Chicago.

Do you realize how pathetic it makes Obama to even have to have this debate about Palin? Palin was a one term governor from a small state and she had a comparable resume to Obama. Obama is almost 50 years old and his supporters still point to what he did in law school. They have to because he didn't do anything else as a lawyer.

Reagan was governor of California for two terms. Bush I was VP for 8 years and head of the CIA. Clinton was a two term governor and a Rhoades Scholar. Hell, Bush II was a two term governor of Texas. Obama was a two bit state legislator and a junior Senator. He is the most pathetic mediocrity ever to be elected President. And he shows it every day as he dithers, proposes insane program and screws over even his most ardent supporters.

Your a right Palin isn't qualified to be President. But, Obama was even less qualified.

Nothing before or likely after will top Obama's Nomination-clinching speech where he sucked up every word his own suck-up TelePrompter writers gave him about how his Nomination marked the start of the planet healing, the sick being cared for, good jobs created, and the ocean's rise slowed.

However, more often than not politicians like Hollywood celebrities have big egos.

Had Palin been a normal person, she would have responded to McCain's offer with a "are you nuts???" Explaining that she was barely into her 1st term as governor, was woefully without knowledge on foreign affairs, economic issues outside energy. But Palin was not. Had she received an offer to make 30 million doing brain surgeries...she probably thought she was just so gosh darn good she would work out just fine slicing temporal lobes..And the people would all love her doing brain surgery and call her the Goddess of Neural Scalpelwork, because she was hot and would have a cult of worshippers praise her every operation. Even if her patients ended up dead or moving and talking like John McCain..

================John - John said... Obama, despite being of below average intelligence and a complete product of affirmative actionMost of our leaders are above-average intelligence, even though truly brilliant ones like Jefferson, Hamilton, Havel, Nixon, Lee Kwan Yew, Bill CLinton remain rare.Obama and even Palin are above-average intelligence.Truly stupid leaders are blessedly as rare as the truly brilliant ones. Mel Martinez, Patty Murray, a handful of loud-mouthed black females like Cynthia McKinney come to mind. Barnara Boxer is supposedly the Stupidest Senator after Bill Smith of New Hampshire lost in a primary to Sununu. But while Smith was unquestionably stupid as a rock, Boxer is merely dumb and clueless.

I must say that I am absolutely sick and frickin' tired of little nitwits like FLS claiming Ronald Reagan was stupid. You'll never do it, FLS, but go read Reagan: In His Own Hand, then tell me you still think he wasn't an intelligent, thoughtful man.

Cuts against his childhood driven psychology. I suspect he actually has some pretty deep-seated insecurity about himself.

But he accepts it when it is offered from others. And he runs with it.

Palin, I think, has a sense of humor about it. But, I also think she has a lot of inner confidence. So that while she doesn't take people as serious as Obama does, she believes that they're actually right.

In fairness Obama is probably of average or above average intelligence, although he is profoundly ignorant about many subjects. You are right, the truely stupid politicians tend to be idiot sons and daughters whose connections got them elected. See e.g. Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Kennedy.

"You'll never do it, FLS, but go read Reagan: In His Own Hand, then tell me you still think he wasn't an intelligent, thoughtful man."

People like FLS don't read books. They may read the occasional polemic that re-enforces their prejudices. But they don't read books and they don't think. If they did, they wouldn't believe the nonsense they do. They pretend to read and act like they know someting. But under it, Newsweek or Huffington is their idea of deep reading.

I think that Obama believes it, but he doesn't really know that it's hype. He just thinks it's his due.

I think Palin is using it with a tongue-in-cheek attitude like "hey, can you believe it?" response.

I think it would be fun to go bowling with Palin.

I think it would be horrendous to go bowling with the Man-child, because every time he got a strike he would say "and many people never expected a son of Africa to play bowling and yet here I am, hope and change. And let me be clear, it's not about me. It's about you paying attention to me."

Obama believes the hype more than Palin does. His sense of himself as a Lincolnesque historic figure who is going to fundamentally shift the direction of American political economics toward a social democracy model, who is going to meld the world into one, who is going to heal the planet, etc., etc., etc, is completely real to him. It is why he even puts his own election at the center of the Berlin Wall celebrations.

What I get a kick out of is that this question -- to be answered as asked -- places two goods on opposite ends.

Thereby, one can be idealistic and naive or Machiavellian and intelligent. So, pick your positive (idealistic, intelligent) for your preferred pol and find them saddled with a negative (naive, Machiavellian).

Pr. A. was this intentional? Please answer the question as asked. A yes may indicate a certain refined evil while a no may indicate a salt of the earth goodness.

If Obama really believed his own hype I'm at a loss to explain why he equivocates so much. His hype says he's a decisive leader who can solve the world's ills, yet every new story seems to be about how he's not finishing tasks, not passing legislation and not making decisions.

Palin on the other hand has been hyped as a rogue who speaks off script and off message when it suits her. That seems to be the case to me. She's now slamming McCain (perhaps justifiably) and letting the Republican Party chase her (if it wishes to do so).

When wondering out loud what obama really believes one must first factor in whether he is pleasing Michell Obama or his sugar daddy Soros or a Moslem Sheik with oil wealth at that moment. He takes on their language and their attitudes until the next more powerful influence over him comes along. So Barack may never show us what he believes about anything. Sad since he seems like a nice clean black man according to Joe Biden and the many swing voters that he has left swinging in the wind.

BHO was originally opposed to the "Yes we can" line because he thought it was corny. But, in the end Axelrod convinced him to go w/ it. [And, it (among other things) worked!]

Also, I've repeatedly heard him parse his language so carefully that it was obvious that he's doing some serious political and image calculating. To me this indicates that he's well aware of his limits and his need to dodge and weave around the world as it exists rather than rely on his "hype" to make problems go away. For example, BHO's denial that his campaign had sent a message to the Canadians regarding NAFTA was extremely parsed, such that even after all was revealed it was still true.

And, even his greatest gaff--the bitter comment--if taken literally would pretty much refer to nobody because of his use of the conjunction 'and' when he defines who he's talking about. Even so, in this situation, and the beer summit, and surely many others BHO does something that folks who truly believe in their own cult of personality don't do. He takes action to acknowledge and remedy an error.

I can't think of situations where Palin took actions to acknowledge and remedy an error. I'm sure there are examples, perhaps folks could identify them for me. This way her ability to accept blame could be compared to BHO's blame acceptance prowess.

Does anybody know if she's used BHO's "I screwed up" line (re Daschle). I mean she's clearly screwed up plenty. And, she seems to have a lot to say about how others gave her bad advice. And, she seems to spend a fair amount of time complaining (whining?) about the ways folks have been mean to her. It seems like she knows that the Couric interview was bad, but she can't/won't accept complete responsibility for the fact that any of the GOP presidential candidates that lost to McCain could have easily answered Couric's questions, which seems to indicate that Palin was the problem, not Couric, not a campaign staffer who suggested that Couric would be a good interviewer for Palin.

When BHO is backed in a corner, he knows it, and he changes course. Palin can't even recognize when she's backed in a corner because she is the greater believer of her own cult of personality.

Obama totally believes the hype. That is the only explanation possible for the string of disasters that is his administration, culminating in the KSM trial announced today. He thinks he can do anything and everything he wants, send the deficit to incredible levels, mandate ruinous expenditures for health care, trash the US in public speeches around the world, and he will pay no price for it politically because he is, well, just so amazingly great. It is being leaked that he will begin talking up-- incredibly-- deficit reduction in time for elections next year. Only a man who thinks he can walk on water could contemplate such prevarication while thinking that we will swallow it.

Another way of looking at this comes down to whether or not you think the person is on your team. We'd all take the evil and smart player on our team and we'd all prefer the good and dumb player on the opponents. We might not admit it though.

I don't think it's a blowout, but I think Obama. He gets the edge because I think Palin knows that she needs some kind of record to point to to back up the hype. Not that she always has the greatest experience to point to, but she gets the impulse. Obama sincerely seems to believe that his greatest qualities and accomplishments are the his rhetoric and deliberation. Success for him is determined entirely within the boundaries of his own skin.

For example, with Afghanistan, it seems like he cares more about making the right decision than achieving the right result.

I have to say Obama. In my opinion Palin thinks so highly of herself, she considers what Althouse calls "hype" inconsequential, because the hype isn't good enough, and it could never be for someone like her. The way I see her rationalizing things she's done to make herself look like a hero is a very bad sign.

I think Obama toys with his cult, but he believes it and feeds off of it.

Take Obama's cult away and he'd shrivel up. Take Palin's away and she'd act exactly the same--until she had a nervous breakdown.

Hmm... one of these things is not like the other. One of these two is nationalizing huge portions of the economy, making life-and-death national security decisions based solely on political score-settling, is dithering away the lives of our troops in Afghanistan, evinces (to me anyway) not a shred of fondness, pride or care for the United States or its citizens, and takes every opportunity to debase the country with grovelling, self-serving apologies to the cadre of dictators, socialists, cynical bureaucrats, and post-national wealthy jet-setters that are sometimes charmingly and colloquially referred to as "the rest of the world".

One of these two miscreants is in a position that gives this person the power to bring the entire malignant mechanism of federal power down upon any one of us, for any reason, without question, the power to shape and misshape our future prosperity, our freedom, our property, our money and our very lives.

The other of these two currently holds no public office and spends their day promoting a book and delivering folksy and clumsy bon-mots to fans.

They may both be believers in his/her/its cult of personality, but one of these souls and their cult of personality is currently able to seriously damage our nation.

I do not think Sarah Palin is the answer to our problems. I find her thoroughly unconvincing and cringe-inducingly average. But her mediocrity doesn't frighten me because it is currently engaged in doing what mediocrity does in these times of ours: making a lot of dough. Her fingers are on the microphone and the money.

Barack Obama, the other thoroughly unconvincing and cringe-inducingly average mediocrity of the pair, should be frightening the shit out of everyone. His fingers are in your pockets and on the Button.

<>1jpb saved me a lot of typing: nailed my thoughts exactly. To add just a bit, I sense sincerity when Mr. Obama laughs at himself. I also feel Mrs. Palin is sincere in that she believes God willed her to run. Now that seems more than a bit full of ones self to me.

I recall reading an interview with Obama a few weeks after his inauguration. They were talking about governing, and Obama said "I happen to be VERY good at it." I thought that was the sign of a dangerously cocky man who'd never run into real opposition, and believed deeply in his own cult of personality.

Number one, he'd never governed anything in his life before, not so much as a hot dog cart. He was a back-bench legislator who could barely be bothered to cast a vote, much less sponsor a bill.

Number two, he'd barely been in office long enough to find the john without getting lost. How dare he compare his performance thus far with the men who led us through wars and depressions?

Number three, even if you believe such things about yourself, it is tacky and desperate and self-sabotaging to make the claim openly. It's the flip side of "I am not a crook!"

Number four, it has been obvious since he first came on the scene that his mind is a stopped-up sewer overflowing with all the bad ideas about government that were tried and then flushed down the crapper in the 20th century. It's plain he thinks that socialism would be just ducky if only the smart kids like him got a chance to try it again properly.

Barack Obama believes to the marrow of his bones that he is the "Lightworker" and all the other bilge his toadies say about him. Sarah Palin believes in little more than her God, our Constitution, and the American Dream.

Oh. Wait. Tricksie premise from the Professor "...the greater believer in his own cult of personality?"

Hmm ....

Well ...there's "I have a gift, Harry." (And I may never stop chuckling over that.)

There's the "O" handsign. There's the Grecian columns. There's the marching songs by the Obama Jungen (oh gawd, the songs). And the lovely prose of the [reputedly] adult songwriters. There's the Workers of the World Unite symbolism (and no slightest trace of tongue in cheek about it).

It's become quite the target-rich environment, don'cha know.

But mostly there's the unalloyed and irrefutable consistent narcissm on permanent public display by President Pretty Princess hisself.

I mean, Got Berlin Wall? Much?

And the total void in recognition of any of this as an "indicator" by the rest of the braying farmyard followers.

Oh, and in response to the observation about the self-deprecation that he's uttered: BZZZT-DING-DING-DING ...that's an inside joke, dude: the One don't really believe it.

Or should I emendate: he don't really believe that you don't disbelieve it.

So that's just the dog-and-pony show for the yokels and 'baggers.

But like I observed, it's a trick question: who believes in the cult more?

Perhaps an exploration of what the opposing "cults" call each other might be efficacious?

From the Jim Jones camp ...we hear mostly [shouted] variations on how stupid and dumb those mind-numbed yokels and their hillbilly princess are.

From the staunch independents who believe in America as the last best hope of man ...you hear "what are you people thinking?"

...to hugely understate the contrasts.

So I guess I'd have to fall down on the "Obama by a squeeker" votes.

Or if I wasn't being snide, and was being trixie myself, I'd say the question is one of a kind with several other posts at Althouse today.

"To add just a bit, I sense sincerity when Mr. Obama laughs at himself."

It's easy to laugh at yourself when you're the winner and you have the guns.

"Who's on Palladian's short list of so-called saviors for 2012?"

I wish I knew. Though I do quibble with the word "savior". I don't search for saviors in politics. I search for competent managers.

"And, what Scotch are you currently reaching for first?"

I've been on an Ardbeg kick, the 10 year old stuff, nothing exotic. But it's amazing stuff.

To economize I've been knocking back martinis between Ardbeg days. Either Plymouth (subtle and beautiful) or Beefeater (higher alcohol and more juniper-forward) gin, 4 to 1 with Dolin dry vermouth, the best French vermouth on the market.

My guess is Palin since her is based more on fact than fantasy. Her persona is the hardworking prol do it all hockey Mom. A lot of it is based on social class. (I love it when the class based bigotry of her detractors - including some close at hand - show its ugly head.) These may not be good reasons to admire a political candidate, but they are real reasons.

Obama's cult is based more on wishful (and perhaps racially bigoted) thinking. The idea that he is a towering intellect when he is objectively identical in intellectual achievement to people like Gore, Bush, and Kerry is laughable. The idea that he is a racial healer when he has taken every opportunity to sow racial division is risible. His cult is based on BS, and he must be aware of that at some level.

You can't have it both ways: you can't state baldly that "Palin is dumb," and then posit that she's cleverly exploiting her daughter of the people image.

I believe that she's bright, bright enough to know that much of her appeal is based on her regular gal image. At the same time she is a regular gal, a regular gal plus. So is she exploiting that image? A toss up.

On the other hand Obama really believes - being not nearly the brain he's made out to be - that he's hot stuff.

It would've been harder to answer this when Palin was first picked as McCain's running mate, but now the answer seems easy.

For both politicians, both things are going on to some degree, but Obama is the greater believer in his hype. This is a guy for whom everything went right ever since he gave that 2004 speech. So there's been a long period of time where he's had people telling him he's "the One". It had to have gone to his head!

When he entered the primaries, he probably thought he was just setting the stage for the future, or maybe he'd get lucky and Hillary would pick him as her running mate. But everything just kept going his way, as if it were preordained.

His over-ambitious attempts to radically change America in quick, arrogant, and reckless fashion suggests he believes the hype as well. I'm still glad I voted for Obama over McCain and I hope his presidency turns out to do more good than harm for America when all is said and done, but stronger checks on his power cannot come soon enough.

With Sarah Palin, she never entered the primaries on her own, and I don't recall her doing much of anything to raise her profile in the lower 49 states before McCain plucked her out of obscurity at the last moment. She certainly hadn't already written two memoirs like Obama! And, unlike with Obama, there hadn't been a period of years where she was experiencing this massive cult of personality forming around her.

When Palin was the VP candidate, she probably did start believing the hype and that she would just magically land in the VP office. Levi Johnston says she was depressed after she lost, so she probably thought that even after she had a terrible campaign that the planets would still align on election day for her, because it was destiny.

Levi Johnston said that after Palin went through her depression she decided to cash in. So, she quit on Alaska and is now all, "It's time for me to do me!"

She wouldn't have quit the governorship if she believed the hype about herself. You don't do that if you think you'll soon be running for high national office again. She was quickly knocked back down to earth, went through depression over it, but she saw she had a segment of the population that worshipped her and she could exploit that for money.

And look how un-seriously she took her book. She rushed to get ghost-written product into the stores ASAP while her profile was still high.

Our politics have become so Oprah-fied that a mere competent manager could never be elected. Face it, we're doomed to have a series of cult-of-personality Presidents.Do the Republicans have anyone other that Palin who registers on the public's radar screen? Unless another mediagenic personality emerges between now and 2012, she will be the nominee, for better or worse.

I think both genuinely believe in the personality they promote and both recognize and manipulate the power of that personality for their personal ambitions. I think Obama probably more sincerely believes in himself and his story than Palin, but so do I and so do most Americans.

ricpic: You can't have it both ways: you can't state baldly that "Palin is dumb," and then posit that she's cleverly exploiting her daughter of the people image.

Althouse isn't saying Palin is dumb in this manner.

The problem is that when Palin makes a mistake she doesn't admit it, she rationalizes what she did to make it look positive. If Palin were to say, "in the past I did dumb things," she would be intelligent now. But she can't do that; instead she has to make up stories which only show believable viewpoints if she is, in fact, a dumb person who doesn't learn.

Palin should be on a national apology tour, not having other people write this crap for her. And I say this as a former Palin supporter.

Palladian hits on the libertarian's dilemma: Palin is less scary by virtue of her failure as a political figure.

The paradox is that, assuming you care enough to at least want a "competent manager" in office, you might want someone competent enough to figure out how to do more with her time than spending "their day promoting a book and delivering folksy and clumsy bon-mots to fans".

In short, she or he will have to be able to do more than something Obama could just as easily do.

What's amazing here is that, with a wave of the hand, Althouse has made her reassessment of Palinism complete. The commentariat have seen fit to swallow Their Leader's commands and now unreservedly accept Palin's mediocrity by equating her... almost but not quite... to BARACK OBAMA!

What a demonstration. What support.

Next assignment: Figure out how Obama and Palin are actually different - in terms that go beyond race, gender, political affiliates or job description.

Obama, clearly. He's developed not only an ongoing political campaign, but a governing philosophy based on his own intrinsic wonderfulness, and that hasn't apparently so much as shaken by real-world evidence that it's just not working.

I think the next Republican will need a cult for their personality that is sophisticated enough to think in terms that go beyond the alphabet, acronyms and the associated Da Vinci Code style of conspiratorial thinking that Miller's so fond of. But that might not happen.

A cult of personality arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.[1] Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships and Stalinist governments.

I just don't buy the premise that Palin has been hyped. Quite the opposite.

The question of who believes their BS more? Seems clear to me that would be Obama. Palin strikes me as a much more grounded person.

FWIW, though I do like Palin and appreciate what she accomplished in her life, I am not that big a Palin fan. I doubt she'll ever be a serious national candidate again. She has too many flaws and weaknesses.

But who knows, maybe she can develop the way Reagan did over the next 10 years. /shrug

Is this Barack Obama you're speaking of? Obama lost to Bobby Rush, the ex-Black Panther, and went on to run again. Has Palin learned from her mistakes?

C'mon fls -- Bobby Rush had way more street cred than BHO.

And as for losing and going on to run again ....

Palin ran for Lt. governor and lost. That was before she ran for governor and won. Which was after she helped assist some unethical political muckety mucks out of state positions; one at the state level, one on the the Oil and Gas Commission -- which she was head of, and left so she could pull the rug out from under the above mentioned muckety mucks.

The real answer is that we haven't anything like the information we need to answer it.

Now, my guess is that Palin, with things like winking at questioners and her "Oh, Jeez, do we have to?" response to Oprah, has considerably better humor about the whole thing.

But what you and a lot of other people keep responding to is tiny quotes, often taken out of context, and passed around by people who historically haven't had any particular scruples about accuracy, down to and including flat making shit up. (See my dusty old Palin Rumors site, which I suspect I need to clean up and prepare for a new onslaught.)

If Palin wishes to escape her cult, she has only to open a newspaper or turn on the TV. There she will find the unbelievers flinging dung and putting clown masks on her graven image. Obama would have to go to the moon to escape the hype. Throughout the world, thoughtful, intelligent people are jotting down thoughtful, intelligent thoughts about what a thoughtful, intelligent man Obama is. It is unrelenting, and it is everywhere....The cult of Palin is like Christianity in the west: the excesses and contradictions are fully explicated. The cult of Obama is more like Islam in Saudi Arabia: You cannot be too excessive in your beliefs....There's a far greater likelihood that Obama is a greater believer for the simple fact that he is surrounded by far greater believers in a far greater, belief. Palin's followers believe in her authenticity not in her charisma.

I think at one point Barack knew it was all a bunch of BS. But that time is long gone and he's really convinced of his God-King status.

Palin, on the other hand, is surrounded by negativity and people telling her she's an ignorant hick not fit to wash dishes much less be involved in politics. Her 'arrogance' or whatever seems to boil down to believing she still has a career in politics. The horrors! I don't see her really having much of a cult of personality.

Is it a cult of personality to say, 'I don't think Palin is a vapid whore who should go back to Alaska?' Really? That's all it takes?